Friday, December 29, 2017

48-Port 10GE Switch Selection: What Is the Right Choice?

The advent of big data, virtualization and cloud computing are pushing higher speed network adoption. As such, data center networks are going through a profound change - in which 40GE has become ubiquitous and 10GE a must. Network managers have reaped great benefits by deploying 10G Ethernet switch at the edge of the large professional network, which makes 10G SFP+ switch a choice for speed and productivity. In the midst of various 10G Ethernet switch, a 48-port 10GE switch is considered as an optimal solution for handling data traffic that delivers great scalability. Then how to choose the right 48-port 10GE switch? We’re going to explore it in this article.

Why Do I Need a 48-Port 10GE Switch?

10G Ethernet switch is a cost-effective solution compared to multiple Gigabit Ethernet ports, while delivers substantially better throughput and latency. It is already well established in IT industry and we’ve seen massive adoption of 10G infrastructure. Density, power and cooling of 10G SFP+ switch are key motivators for deployment of data center network. With compelling improvement in bandwidth, port density, latency and power consumption. 10G SFP+ switch has become the interconnect of choice for latency sensitive application with enhanced reliability and network performance. 10G Ethernet switch comes into various port configuration, and a 48-port 10GE switch is the most future-proofing one with abundant application in business oriented network. It increases the total available bandwidth, the reduced power consumption in cables and switch ports, and overall reduction in infrastructure costs.

48-Port 10GE Switch Selection: What Is the Right Choice?

Common 48-Port 10GE Switch Comparison

As the need for 48-port 10 Gigabit switch spurring, vendors also compete to offer 10G Ethernet switch with advanced function and decreased cost. Here we compare some commonly seen 48-port 10GbE switch along with FS.COM N5850-48S6Q 48-port 10GE switch, including parameters about their port combination, switching capacity, latency, power consumption and 48-port 10Gb switch price.

Model
Edge-core AS5712-54X
Cisco WS-C3850-48XS-S
Dell Networking S4048-ON
HPE 5900AF (JC772A)
N5850-48S6Q
SFP+ Ports
48
48
48
48
48
QSFP+ Ports
6
4
6
4
6
Switch Class
L2 and L3
L3
L2 and L3
L3
L3
Switching Capacity
720 Gbps
1280 Gbps
1.44Tbps full-duplex
1280 Gbps
1.44Tbps full-duplex
Latency
720 ns
-
600ns
-
680 ns
Max Power Drew
282 W
-
234.35 W
260 W
200W
Forwarding Rate
1 Bpps
909 Mpps
1080 Mpps
-
1 Bpps
Price
$5,095.00
$7,970 00
$7,475.96
$9522.52
$4,419.00

When selecting a 10G SFP+ switch, it all comes down to two things: application and budget. Your application of the 48-port 10GE switch partially determines several factors, such as port configuration, switching capacity, power consumption and switch class. The port configuration and speed are relative to switching capacity. So you have to consider the amount of traffic to run through this 48-port 10GE switch and select one that can accommodate all the data flow. Power consumption on the other hand is also very essential as it defines the operating cost in the long run, a power efficient switch can save you a great amount of money. All the 10G Ethernet switch in the table have very similar port combination and they are all L2/L3 switches. As for these 48-port 10Gb switch price, N5850-48S6Q has unsurpassed benefits over the others.

Deep Dive into FS.COM 48-Port 10GE Switch N5850-48S6Q

This 48-Port 10GE switch N5850-48S6Q is a 10G SDN switch, which is designed to meet the high-performance, availability, and network-scaling requirements of enterprise and cloud data centers. It provides full line-rate switching at Layer 2 or Layer 3 across 48 x 10GbE ports and 6 x 40GbE uplinks, delivering 1.44Tbps switching capacity for the most demanding applications. This 48-port 10GE switch can be used either as a Top-of-Rack switch, or as part of a 10GbE or 40GbE spine-leaf fabirc. All ports support full L2/L3 features, IPv4/IPv6 and OpenFlow for high scalability and Software-defined Network (SDN) for ease of operation. Besides, N5850-48S6Q 48-Port 10GE switch delivers excellent low latency (680 ns) and power efficiency in a PHYless design. While support for advanced features, including MLAG, VxLAN, SFLOW, SNMP, MPLS etc, this 48-port 10G Ethernet switch is ideal for traditional or fully virtualized data center.

fs.com 48-port 10ge switch

Conclusion

48-port 10GE switch has made a great leap forward to satisfy the demand for increased network performance, reliability and scalability. The need for 10 Gigabit Ethernet spans all markets and business types, as technology marches forward, these 10G Ethernet switches will no doubt drop in cost and increase in capability. Equipped with higher level of hardware and software reliability design, FS.COM 48-port 10 Gigabit switch offers compelling reliability and scalability improvements. For more information, welcome to visit our site.

Sourcehttp://www.fiber-optic-tutorial.com/48-port-10ge-switch-select-right.html

Thursday, December 21, 2017

Smart Switch: A Wise Choice for SMB Networks

Ethernet network switch marks the backbone of your enterprise network, with which you can connect multiple core devices like routers, printers, PCs and other hardware. There exist a dazzling array of network switches with various feature sets and functions. With regard to management options, there are primary three categories of switches: unmanaged switch, smart switch and managed switch. Among which smart switch has ranked as a moderate choice for better regulating business network – as a perfect mix of essential functions and affordability. If you’ve outstripped your unmanaged switch but don’t expect for a more advanced managed switch, it’s the right time to consider a smart managed switch.

What Is A Smart Switch?

Smart switch, or smart managed switch, fills the middle ground between the unmanaged switch and managed switch – it offers certain levels of management, basic quality-of-service (QoS) and limited security features with limited numbers of ACLs (access control lists) . Smart switch generally has a browser-based interface for management and it also enable segmentation of the network by creating VLANs, which makes it quite a versatile solution. Smart switch fits best at the edge of a large network (with managed switches as core switch). Here we make a further comparison between smart managed switch vs unmanaged switch, and smart switch vs managed switch.
smart switch

Smart Switch vs Unmanaged switch

Unmanaged switch presents the most cost-friendly plug-and-play solution for deployment that require only basic layer 2 switching and connectivity. It cannot be modified/managed and requires no configuration at all. Primarily targeted for home and SOHO, unmanaged switch is generally used to small network with only a few components, or to add temporary workgroups to larger networks. Compared to “dumb” unmanaged switch, smart managed switch opens the door to manage, monitor and configure the network, but only with very limited capability.
smart switch vs unmanaged switch

Smart Switch vs Managed Switch

Fully managed switch is designed to deliver the most comprehensive set of features to provide the highest level of security, the most precise control and management and the greatest scalability. Managed switch can be deployed as aggregation/access switches in very large professionally networks or as core switches in relatively smaller networks, allowing organizations to manage and troubleshoot network remotely and securely, and to expand with flexibility.
smart switch vs managed switch
Smart switch can be seen as a “lighter” managed switch – less capable and scalable than the managed switches, with lighter management capabilities and less VLAN groups and nodes (mac address). As such, smart switch offers a less expensive alternative to managed switches. Additionally, managed switch generally allows for full configuration by command line interface (CLI) via a console port and telnet and or SSH session, and often a web GUI. While a smart switch often lacks any console port, have less configuration flexibility via a web-based interface. Seen as an entry-level managed switch.

Should I Choose Smart Switch Over the Other Two?

The choice typically depends on two factors: budget and application. If you just want to setup a home network and keep things simple, an unmanaged and smart managed switches are good enough. But if you want to manage a LAN and need configuration options like VALN and QoS, or to deal with mission-critical applications that demands massive data traffic, it is better to use at least a smart managed switch or the more powerful managed switch.

As unmanaged switch is targeted for home and SOHO while fully managed switch for data centers, enterprises and relatively professional networks, smart switch, therefore, is mostly for small to medium sized business (SMB) users who may need some or certain configuration and management. They offer access to switch management features such as port monitoring, link aggregation, and VPN through a simple Web interface.

Conclusion

We have gone through the basics of three primary categories of network switch – unmanaged switch, smart switch and fully managed switch, as well as deployment scenarios of each. Smart managed switch can make an excellent transition solution when unmanaged switch is never adequate and the cost for a managed switch cannot be justified. Organizations and enterprises nowadays have reap significant benefits from using smart managed switch, which proves that it is a journey worthwhile to take, especially for SMB networks.

Monday, December 11, 2017

CFP Wiki:CFP /CFP2/CFP4 Transceiver Module Overview

Serving as the mainstream high-speed transport technology, 40/100G is the choice of data center to underlines the bandwidth bottlenecks facing high traffic service. Thus CFP transceiver is introduced at the point to meet those requirements. This article offers a simple CFP wiki, addressing rudiments of CFP /CFP2/CFP4 transceiver module. Let’s see how data centers could benefit from adopting CFP transceiver.

CFP Wiki: The Choice of Data Center

The CFP MSA (Multi-Source Agreement) defines hot-pluggable optical transceiver form factors to enable 40/100G and the looming 400G applications. It includes pluggable CFP, CFP2 and CFP4 transceivers to support the high bandwidth requirements of data communication networks. Compared with CFP form factor, the latter CFP2 and CFP4 module are of smaller size, and will double and quadruple front panel port density, respectively. CFP 2 and CFP4 modules support existing and future duplex single-mode fiber (SMF) and multimode fiber (MMF) interfaces. The figure below shows drawings of the CFP, CFP2, and CFP4 form factors. Let’s go further to have a detailed understanding of each.
cfp wiki-cfp-cfp2-cfp4

CFP Transceiver Module

CFP (C=100 in Roman numerals; Centum) refers to 100G form-factor pluggable, which is a new ultra high speed pluggable I/O interface supporting 40 and 100G Ethernet applications. CFP transceiver is defined by MSA (Multi-Source Agreement) for high-speed digital signal transmission, like carrier networks, data centers and wireless equipment. The original CFP specification was proposed at a time when 10 G signals were far more achievable than 25 G signals. As such to achieve 100 Gbit/s line rate, the most affordable solution was based on 10 lanes of 10 Gbit/s.

CFP2 Transceiver Module

Advances in technology have brought about CFP2 MSA. CFP2 module specifies a form-factor of 1/2 in size of the CFP module. The CFP2 module electrical interface varies by application, but the nominal signaling lane rate is 25Gbit/s per lane. Its interface can also optionally support a nominal signaling lane rate of 10Gbit/s. CFP2 module may be used to support single-mode fiber (SMF) and multimode fiber (MMF). Designed for optical networking, the size of CFP2 module has been chosen to accommodate a wide range of power dissipations and applications. The module electrical interface has been generically specified to allow for supplier-specific customization around various 4 x 25Gbit/s interfaces, but can support 8x25Gbit/s, 10x10Gbit/s, and 8x50Gbit/s.
CFP2 module

CFP4 Transceiver Module

Then here comes the latest CFP4 hot-pluggable transceiver module. CFP MSA defined the CFP4 form factor as an optical transceiver to support 40/100G interface for Ethernet, Telecommunication and other applications. Identical to CFP2 module, the electrical interface of CFP4 will vary by application, the nominal signaling lane rate is also 25Gbit/s. The CFP4 electrical interface can also optionally support a nominal signaling lane rate of 10Gbit/s. With 1/4 the size of CFP module, CFP4 can be used to support SMF and MMF optics. CFP4 electrical interface is specified to allow for customization specified by supplier with various 4 x 25Gbit/s and 4 x 10Gbit/s interfaces.
CFP4 module

Summary

CFP, CFP2 and CFP4 are 100G hot-pluggable form factors that designed for optical communication applications compliant to 40/100G IEEE 802.3 standard. Which is a great fit for 40 and 100G Ethernet data center applications. CFP2 and CFP4, with smaller size and 2.8 times faster speed than current CFP module, enables higher network density and more design flexibility. This article only provides CFP wiki and some basic information of CFP, CFP2 and CFP4, wish it can help.

Sunday, December 10, 2017

QSFP28 MSA Compatible 100G Optics Overview

As data centers around the world explore their options for increasing network speeds and bandwidth, 100G QSFP28 MSA compatible optics appear as an ideal alternative to accelerate data flow. QSFP28 optics hence become the universal data center form factor for 100G network transmission. This article will address QSFP28 MSA compatible optics used in 100G transmission.

QSFP28 MSA Optics: The Revolution in Data Centers

The adoption rate of QSFP28 MSA compliant optics is consistently on the rise for the past few years. It is predicted that over half of the data center will make the shift to adopting optics that is QSFP28 MSA compliant. The traditional 10G or even 40G may not be enough considering the explosion of data, therefore, QSFP28 MSA is going to become the new standard, and it has the following advantages.
qsfp28 msa optics

Cost Efficiency—QSFP28 MSA optics now deliver a compelling price point, offering far greater capacity increases. And it still future-proofing the network with unsurpassed bandwidth. The growth in QSFP28 MSA optic deployments will undoubtedly drive down the cost of 100G optics.

Speed and Capacity—SFP+ and QSFP+ optics will not be enough for data intensive industries. Thus QSFP28 MSA optic is specifically designed to transport enormous amounts of data with ultra-low latency.

Flexibility—100G will be the preferred technology across long-haul networks. 100G networking can be customized, optimized, and easily expanded to allow for changes in the future.

QSFP28 MSA Compatible Optics Overview

QSFP28 MSA optic generally has the exact same footprint and faceplate density as 40G QSFP+ . But it is implemented with four 25-Gbps lanes. With an upgrade electrical interface, QSFP28 MSA optic is capable of supporting signal up to 28Gbps signals. Though QSFP28 transceiver keeps all of the physical dimensions of its predecessors, it surpasses them with the strong ability to increase density, decrease power consumption, and decrease price per bit. The Following are some QSFP28 MSA compliant optics for different applications.
100g qsfp28 transceiver
100G SR4 QSFP28
100G SR4 QSFP28 is designed to support short distance transmission via multimode fiber. This transceiver module can support 100G transmission up to 70m on OM3 MMF and 100m on OM4 MMF. With MTP interface, the 100G SR4 QSFP28 MSA complaint module enables 4×25G dual way transmission over 8 fibers.
100g sr4
100G QSFP28 LR4
100G QSFP28 LR4 is QSFP28 MSA complaint, and is specifically designed for use in long distance transmission. QSFP28 LR4 utilizes WDM technology for 4×25G data transmission, and these four 25G optical signals are transmitted over four different wavelengths. With a duplex LC interface, 100G LR4 QSFP28 module enables 100G dual-way transmission up to 10 km over single-mode fiber.
qsfp28 lr4
QSFP28 100G PSM4
100G PSM4 is standardized by QSFP28 MSA and it uses four parallel fibers (lanes) operating in each direction, with each lane carrying a 25G optical transmission. 100G PSM4 module sends the signal down to eight-fiber cable with an MTP interface. The operating distance of 100G PSM4 is limited to 500 m.
100g psm4
QSFP28 100G DWDM4
100G DWDM4 uses WDM technology—an optical multiplexer and de-multiplexer to reduce the number of fibers to 2. Being QSFP28 MSA compatible, 100G DWDM4 can operate on single-mode fiber up to 2 km over duplex LC interface. Compared with QSFP28 LR4, it has shorter transmission distance and lower cost.
qsfp28 100g-dwdm4

QSFP28 MSA Compliant Cables

In addition to the all the QSFP28 MSA 100G transceivers mentioned above, there are also high-speed cables deployed in 100G network. The cables can be either QSFP28 to 4 SFP28 copper cables (DACs), or active optical cables (AOCs). QSFP28 to 4 SFP28 DACs offer the lowest cost with reach up to 3 m. They are typically used within the racks of the data center, or as chassis-to-chassis interconnect in large switch and routers. QSFP28 AOCs are much lighter and offer longer reach up to over 100 m.

Conclusion

QSFP28 MSA compliant 100G optics are indispensable component to embrace 100G to your infrastructure, and they also facilitate scaling to 100G networks with the simplicity as 10G. With higher port density, lower power consumption and lower cost, QSFP28 MSA transceiver is an ideal alternative for large scale data centers, as well as for future network expansions.

Thursday, December 7, 2017

Switch Stacking vs Uplink: Which Is Better for Connecting Switches?

Networks will eventually grow to the point that more switches should be integrated to increase port density and boost bandwidth. Then, should I buy switches with more ports or just connecting switch via stacking or uplink. Obviously, the latter makes more sense. Switch stacking vs uplink - is there any difference between them? In which case we should choose switch stacking over uplink switch? This article tries to shed some light on the pros and cons of switch stacking vs uplink, and help you to make the right decision.

What Is Switch Stacking?

Let’s start from switch stacking. By stacking switches together, you are allowed to manage multiple switches as a single entity, but with typically increased bandwidth between switches. Switch stacking can be done by connecting switch backplane via a stacking cable - it is a cable specified for stacking switch that comes with the switch. Staking switch makes it very convenient and easy to configure multiple switches from a single console – stacking can be seen as a single entity, you manage one device rather than each stack member, and to manage several stacking switches with only one IP address. Which significantly enhances network efficiency while simplifies management.

switch stacking vs uplink

Generally, a stackable switch has a dedicated ports for stacking via special cable or module, which brings higher costs. However, some stack-capable switches are embeded with some uplink ports for stacking to minimize the cost, like these FS Gigabit stackable managed switch (S3800-24T4S) and gigabit stackable SFP managed switch (S3800-24F4S).
gigabit stackable managed switch

What Is Uplink Port on Network Switch?

An uplink port is a port on which transmit and receive are reversed, which is designed for inner-switch connection with a standard straight-through cable. Otherwise it would require a crossover cable where the transmit and receive are crossed in the cable rather than on the switch port. Plug the uplink port of one switch, for example, into the standard port of another switch cab help expand the network’s size. When connecting two devices, the uplink port on only one of them is used. If you connect two uplink ports with straight-through cable, the result is the same as using two conventional ports – makes the devices fail to communicate.
switch uplink

Switch Stacking vs Uplink: How to Choose?

Some may still hesitate when choosing switch stacking vs uplink. Simply put it, swtich stacking is a great fit for limited space deployment where flexibility trumps availability. Being a pay-as-you-grow model, switch stacking is attractive for users that need flexibility in their physical network and in the amount of needed traffic. It gives you the resilience to operate them as a part of a stack today, or as individual switch tomorrow. Besides, stacking offers more bandwidth while simplifies network management, proven as a more cost-effective alternative to chassis based higher-end switches. However, stacking are only for stackable switch in the same product family of the same vendor, and the connecting distance is limited by the length of stacking cable – often within wiring closet.

Switch uplink not only relieves you from having to use crossover cable between two standard Ethernet ports. It also offers a perfect fit for connecting switches from different product family or even different vendor, enabling much more flexibility to your infrastructure. Moreover, leveraging the standard Cat5e/Cat6 cable, switch uplink extends the linking distance up to 100 m. If your switches are located over 100 m, you can put another switch in between as the bridge. Compared switch stacking vs uplink, switch uplink only provides very limited bandwidth increase. In some cases, users can benefit from using both switch stacking and uplink.

Conclusion

Switch stacking vs uplink, as two critical methods to increase switch ports, has their own benefits and drawbacks. As always, the most important part is to determine what your requirements are. We have gone through both pros and cons of switch stacking vs uplink, wish it may help you to make a valid decision for your network.

Sunday, December 3, 2017

Use 100G QSFP28 Transceiver to Speed Up Your Network

The unceasing migration to higher levels of network performance and scalability drives the boom of 100G transceiver market. 100G transceiver has become a preferable alternative for those bandwidth-hungry applications to accelerate data flow in data centers. In this article, we will introduce several types of 100G transceiver which are commonly seen on the market. And emphasis will be put on the 100G QSFP28 transceiver.

Common 100G Transceiver Decoding

Currently, we have 100G CFP transceiver, CFP2 transceiver and CFP4 transceiver available on the market. The CFP transceiver comes out firstly. It was designed just after SFP interface, but it is significantly larger to support 100 Gbit/s data rates. While the electrical connection of a CFP transceiver uses 10 x 10 Gbit/s lanes in each direction (RX, TX), the optical connection can support both 10 x 10 Gbit/s and 4 x 25 Gbit/s variants of 100 Gbit/s interconnects.
As technology keeps advancing, there came CFP2 and CFP4 that allows higher performance and density. Having similar electrical connection with a CFP transceiver, CFP2 and CFP4 transceiver specify a form-factor of 1/2 and 1/4 respectively in size of a CFP transceiver. These three modules are not interchangeable, but would be inter-operable at the optical interface with appropriate connectors.
100G cfp modules

100G QSFP28 transceiver Description

Then here comes the dominate 100G transceiver—100G QSFP28 transceiver, supporting four 25 Gbit/s lanes. With an upgraded electrical interface, 100G QSFP28 transceiver is capable of handling signal rates up to 28 Gbit/s, making 100G network deployment as easy as that of 10G. Moreover, 100G QSFP28 transceiver has a strong ability to increase density, decrease power consumption, and decrease price per bit.
Thanks to QSFP28 module, the path to 100G can hence be changed from 10G-40G-100G to 10G-25G-100G or 10G-25G-50G-100G, with largely simplified cabling and reduced costs. There are two widely used 100G QSFP28 transceiver: QSFP28 100G SR4 for short range transmission up to 100 m and QSFP28 100G LR4 for long range transmission up to 10 km. The following diagram illustrate the details of each QSFP28 module.
100g lr4 vs 100g sr4

What to Benefit From 100G QSFP28 transceiver?

Giving a look back to the evolution of 100G transceiver, all these changes are closely related to factors like power and cost – makes the prevalence of 100G QSFP28 transceiver an inevitable trend. Then, what exactly can QSFP28 module bring to us?
100g qsfp28 transceiver

Higher Port Density: The first generation of 100G transceiver is CFP, which is very large. When it comes to CFP2 and CFP4, the size was a lot decreased. With the same footprint and face plate density as QSFP+, QSFP28 module is even smaller than CFP4, and its high port density is also an overwhelming advantage. Generally, up to 36 QSFP28 can be installed on a 1RU switch on the front panel.

Lower Power Consumption: Compared with other 100G transceiver, QSFP28 transceiver requires the lowest power for transmission, with less than 3.5 Watts. While for other 100G transceiver, the power consumption ranges from 6 Watts to 24 Watts.

Lower Cost: QSFP28 transceiver is able to save considerable amount of money with higher port density and lower power consumption. While implemented with four lanes, 100G QSFP28 transceiver increases the transmission capacity of every lane from 10G to 25G, which effectively decreases the cost for each bit.

Conclusion

With higher port density, lower power consumption and lower cost, 100G QSFP28 transceiver offers an optimum and feasible alternative for 100G network, especially for those large scale data centers and carriers. Hope this article could assist you in choosing the right transceiver to achieve smooth 100G migration.

Friday, December 1, 2017

100G Transceiver: 100G SR10 or 100G LR4 CFP modules

Although 10/40G Ethernet nowadays still captures the major position in the world of telecommunication, service providers and enterprise data centers are actually undertaking an infrastructures transformation. Which fuels the demand for higher speeds and better performance 100G transceiver, making migration to 100G an inevitable trend. Optical transceiver modules always pertain to an integral part of overall system design, as for 100G CFP modules, the options vary widely. This article makes a comparison between the most common two CFP transceivers: 100G SR10 and 100G LR4 CFP modules.

Basics of 100G CFP Modules

CFP transceiver is a hot pluggable form factor designed for optical networking applications. CFP is the acronym of 100G (here C equals 100 in Roman numerals) form factor pluggable. The name clearly indicates that CFP modules are designed typically for 100G interfaces. To make it easier, let’s begin with general CFP modules architecture. It basically consists of two parts—electrical interface interacting with equipment, and line card interface and optical line interface. The following figure displays the general architecture of 100GBASE CFP transceiver.
100gbase cfp modules architecture
From equipment line card to electrical interface, CFP transceiver has several “M-Lines” with 10Gbps speed. If CFP modules are working 100GBase-LR4 mode, then it has 10 x 10Gbps M-Lines. As for 40GBase-LR4, it uses 4 x 10Gbps M-Lines. The so called “gear box” is electrical 10:4 mux/demux module aggregating up to 10 M-Line interfaces in maximum 4 N-Line interfaces. Each N-Line is 25Gbps for 100GBase-LR4 and 10Gbps for 40GBase-LR4. The N-Line is converted to optical signal with different wavelength and all four wavelengths are transmitted to CFP transceiver line interface using built in passive optical multiplexers.

100G SR10 and 100G LR4 CFP Modules Overview

100G CFP modules offer connectivity options for a wide range of service provider transport, data center networking, and enterprise core aggregation applications. The basic information of CFP-100G-SR10 and CFP-100G-LR4 module is provided below.

100G SR10 CFP Modules

CFP-100G-SR10 is an IEEE standardized CFP transceiver supporting link lengths of 100 m and 150 m respectively on laser-optimized OM3 and OM4 multifiber cables. It primarily enables high-bandwidth 100-gigabit links over 24-fiber ribbon cables terminated with MPO/MTP-24 connectors. It can also be used in 10 x 10 Gigabit Ethernet mode along with ribbon to duplex fiber breakout cables for connectivity to ten 10GBASE-SR optical interfaces. 100G SR10 CFP interface serves as a more cost-effective solution, which is optimized for data center application but limited to short distances.
cfp-sr10-100gbase-sr10
100G LR4 CFP Modules

CFP-100G-LR4 is standardized by IEEE using standard LC dual fiber interface with single-mode cable, but running four optical wavelengths each direction (1295.56 nm, 1300.05 nm,1304.59 nm, 1309.14 nm) and muxing/demuxing of these wavelengths happening inside CFP module. Each wavelength is running at 25.78 Gbps and it is possible to achieve up to 10 km. Compared to 100G SR10 CFP, 100G LR4 CFP delivers much better reach for long-haul applications, but at a cost premium.
cfp-lr4-100gbase-lr4

Comparison Between 100G SR10 and 100G LR4 CFP Modules

In this section, we’re trying to figure out the difference between CFP-100G-SR10 and CFP-100G-LR4 from the perspective of connectors and cabling used on each. For connectors, 24-fiber MPO/MTP connector is for 100GBASE-SR10 CFP transceiver while dual SC/PC connector for 100GBASE-LR4. Note that only patch cords with PC or UPC connectors are supported. The cabling specification and features for 100G SR10 and 100G LR4 CFP modules are presented in the following diagrams.

100g sr10 vs 100g lr4

Conclusion

Service providers and data centers are embracing the trend of 100G network migrations, while IT managers must think twice when choosing from those various 100G transceiver options. 100G SR10 is preferred due to lower cost over 100G LR4, but its reaching distance is limited. Whereas 100GBASE-LR4 CFP transceiver enables data transmission up to 10 km with higher price. This article generally offers some basic knowledge of each CFP modules, the decision actually depends on your specific demands or the application requirements. Always be aware of what you need, which will work best for you.